Hey Gap, I've been scouring the forum for info on tempering since I've had a few problems lately.... anyway, I see that you are in Melbourne - I am in S.A. How is your tempering machine going? I'd love to talk to you about it.......

OK thanks. Here's a quick question. Is it equally as bad to have over-cooled chocolate as it is to have it too hot?

aguynamedrobert

California, USA

Member

Members

Forum Posts: 256

Member Since: July 5, 2006

Offline

5

December 14, 2006 - 8:42 pm

I think you have a better chance of getting a better temper if you go to cold vs to hot but both can blow the temper....different crystals form at different temperatures and that is why too cold or too hot can blow the temper.
The biggest thing with overcooling is the viscosity as well as the temper....the chocolate will get more and more viscous as the temp drops...making it bad to work with...

OK thanks. Here's a quick question. Is it equally as bad to have over-cooled chocolate as it is to have it too hot?

The key point about overcooling is that if you pass too quickly through the beta phase temperature there may not be enough time for a large number of beta crystals to form before other crystal structures also start to form. Therefore you get a mix of seed types and indeed the chocolate can end up out of temper. Furthermore unless your chocolate is very well-mixed during the beta crystallisation once it drops below the temperature window you are likely to get uneven zones of tempering because of uneven distributions of seed crystals. With chocolate tempering, you want an initial high melt temperature which you then drop to a steady crystallisation temperature and hold it there for some time until enough crystals are present. At that point it helps to raise the temperature just slightly ( to kill any incipient non-beta crystals) and then quickly drop it.

High temperatures, meanwhile, melt the beta form as well, so you end up with chocolate that never was tempered. Is this worse? Well, not really inasmuch as uneven temper is virtually the same anyway, but it does mean you never really even have a chance. An accurate thermometer, hand-calibrated, is an absolute necessity. Make sure you go through the careful process of calibrating it and remarking so that you get good readings.